This research examines the relationships between social experience and psychological well-being. It looks particularly at enduring and repeated experiences that occur within occupational, economic, marital and parental roles. Data for this study have been collected in a survey of 2300 people in the Chicago Urbanized Area. Several analyses have been made from the large body of data. One examines the conditions that produce a greater tendency toward depression among women than among men; a second also deals with depression, but this one looks at the circumstances disposing the formerly married and the never married more than the married toward this mental state; a third deals with some of the circumstances leading to stress in marriage; another is concerned with the use of alcohol as a mechanism to manage anxieties arising out of economic problems; and a final analysis aims of identifying patterns of coping employed by people in contending with different kinds of life strains.